Coming Home

In 1975 there was nothing reasonable about the road-trip Dad proposed. Much of it would be on rugged, unpaved tracks where services and spare parts were unavailable. If we had mechanical trouble we would, for the most part, have to deal with it ourselves. Should we have an accident or become ill, medical facilities were few and far between. We would have no way to communicate with family or friends except by letter – and, in many places, mail service was iffy. We would be driving through parts of the world where the population, if not actually hostile to Americans, had no great love for them. People, by the way, whose language we could not understand or speak. Unreasonable though it was, the window of opportunity to make such a trip was rapidly coming to an end. Soon, revolutions and wars would close some of the countries we traveled through. Many of the historical sites we saw would be destroyed. So, in retrospect, we made the trip at the right time.

We also made the trip at the right time in my life. I was impressionable. I was immature for my age. I was still trying to figure out who I am and what God wanted me to do with myself. It is no exaggeration to say that the trip was formative and had a major impact on my faith. It was one of the highlights of my life. I look back on it with nostalgia. I hope that you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed living it. To illustrate the tale, I've included 14 maps and over 120 photographs.